TO CELEBRATE 37 years of marriage this year are Kathleen and Robert Barnes.

Kathleen and Robert Barnes met on a rainy winter evening in Washington, D.C., where Kathleen was attending the University of Maryland and Robert was working on Capitol Hill as a press secretary.

At the time, Kathleen was going out with Robert’s best friend from grade school, but when Robert met her that evening he knew she was the one.

“She was just so beautiful, and she was really, really smart… that’s pretty much catnip to me. I had my heart set,” Robert tells us.

He promptly set out to displace his old chum and tennis partner in Kathleen’s affection. After three months of “wheedling and wooing” — with lots of cards and flowers — Kathleen finally agreed to go out with him.

When Robert left for law school in Philadelphia that fall, Kathleen, an art history and English major, followed and worked as a gallerist at the Institute of Contemporary Art before they came to Los Angeles.

“When we laid eyes on Larchmont it felt like something out of Westchester, and we stayed.”

Kathleen is a native of Westchester, NY, and “[Larchmont is] like Westchester except with better weather,” says Robert.

“We loved it here… we loved the vibrancy” as the city was preparing for the 1984 Olympics. “It was just a wonderful time to be in Los Angeles, and we never looked back.”

The couple has lived in Larchmont Village and Windsor Square since 1982, the same year they were married.